Relief from the stress tests

[CHIMO]

US Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner told the country last week that the banks are essentially OK, based on his stress tests of the country's 19 largest banks. Geithner's call may not seem quite right. After all, the bad case in the stress tests assumed that unemployment would average 8.9% for all of 2009, and we just hit that last week. But there's no reason not to take the Treasury secretary at his word.

So, we are told that the banks have the means necessary to get through the downturn. In that case, why should we spend hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to keep these healthy institutions afloat?

As long as the banks were on their death beds there was a plausible argument that taxpayer dollars were needed to keep the financial system from collapsing. But if the banks now have a clean bill of health from the Treasury, then it's time for the banks to stop relying on taxpayer handouts.

In short, we should take the stress test results as good news. Based on what Geithner has told news, the bailouts should be over. It's time for the banks to stand on their own two feet and to get their hands out of our pockets.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/may/11/stress-tests-us-banks

[notesdev]

1. It won't be long

before everyone figures out what a scam the "stress tests" are, when the conditions in the worst scenario tested were better than are conditions at present.